When last we left our intrepid heros, they were trapped on a staircase that lead down into a sub-sewer secret tunnel.
The swordmage drew his blade to illuminate the tunnels, and the damsel they had pursued was no where nearby to be found. The party passes a few porculus style doorways through one of which they hear female screams.
The party rushes the room to discover Lissera crouched down near the floor in fear. She immediately attacks the swordmage and confesses all the while that she is being controlled by someone else - specifically she names the newest party member Sangi as being the one who is controlling her.
Later in that same round Balahnoths appear hanging from the ceiling, revealing themselves from their invisible hiding places. They make quick work of attacking the swordmage, focusing all of their attacks on him as he was at the limit of their reach, and therefore safely removed from them. Using their minor action to turn invisible after every attack.
The Swordmage pleads with Lissera to snap out of it, all the while taking extreme amounts of damage from her dagger attacks.
After round 2 of the party makes a few perception checks to see if there is a way to lessen the difficulty of this challenge, and they hear that the portcullus style doors opposite them buzz with a strange humming noise while closed. They figure it must interfere with the creatures blindsight and their ability to teleport, because teleport requires line of sight, and if the hum interferes with the way the creatures see, then they couldn't leave the room if they closed the doors.
The group flees the room, and end up locking lissera in there with the baddies. Shortly after reconsider and reopen the doors to have her in her possessed state follow to attack them and close the door behind her.
Sangi, knowing Lissera to be a doppleganger waits till she in the space where the portcullus closes, and pushes the button from another entrance - rolling a percentile to see what happens, getting less then 20% at 17% I rule it slices her in half. Death upon her, her true form of doppleganger appears, but not before our barbarian has words with Sangi for his brash actions.
The challenge effectively over the party mops up the remaining baddies, including some that weren't at threat locked up in a nearby cell - Yay for extra xp!
With no other way out of the secret laboratory/cells the party returns to the basement below the girls dormatory, only to find at the top of the staircase the chapel bells are ringing a strange melody that has all of the girls to dawn armor and weapons similar to that of kobolds and mindlessly wander around in search of the party.
The party yet undetected had the option to close the secret door back and recover from their long drawn out battle, or to press on - Sangi says he thinks he knows what is going on and they can't wait to rest, they have to get to the bell tower. The party still suscpicious of Sangi, reluctantly agrees.
The party decides, rather than trying to use the knockout rules and wade through the horrdes of little girls in armor - they would instead climb the staircase to the roof and try to find another way to the bell tower from there.
Each level of the staircase requires a stealth check from the group - individual or assisted, the group went with individual stealth checks, ending up with 5 baddies in tow by the roof door, which turns out to be locked. Luckily someone notices a waxy grease bucket and kicks it down the stairs to slow up the on coming baddies.
Unfortunately no one has the theivery necessary to open the lock without breaking it, and so they bust down the door. Now with a broken door and no way to stop the girls from coming up after them, they survey the scene. The party discovers a classroom on the roof where animal disections were left in complete, brains sitting in chemical trays. The party ignores the classroom for now, and heads for the Crane that was mounted to the roof, because of re-roofing work that hadn't been completed yet.
They find a large size tar bucket attached to the crane and Sangi uses the crane to block the doorway to the staircase by setting the tar bucket down infront of the door, at the same time swashing a possessed girl.
The barbarian in the meantime drags a deaf little girl who had been bitten - he uses a heal check and knows he needs to suck out the poison/disease from her wounds. In doing so he becomes afflicted himself, making an endurance check every round.
The ground floor quad still full of little girl baddies, the party isn't sure if they should use the scaffolding to get off the roof or not, in the process of deliberation the wizard picked up a brain with mage hand and makes it talk with ghost sound, convincing the little brain crazed girls that the brain was living and then tosses it down the staircase they had came up, effectively ridding the party of that threat from moving the tar-bucket.
Meanwhile the quadrent leader a Mind Flayer Infiltrator Elite out in front of his thralls, comes up from the opposite staircase to the roof and attacks the Swordmage for two vicious rounds, until Sangi leaps into the crane after reattaching the tarbucket, this time intent on dropping it on the Mind Flayer Infiltrator by crashing it through the roof of the staircase. Sangi does a precision drop, using his dungeoneering skill to operate the crane, crushing the mind flayer and blocking that staircase. this leaves only the scaffolding left to use to get down. Luckily the mind flayers thralls were still following his last order, which was to converge on the roof - this cleared the ground level of thralls. The party makes some heroic skill checks to slide or jump down the roof sections to get to the scaffolding, taking the injured Kimico with them.
The wizard with another surprising use of a power, uses a poison cloud to block the line of sight from the party to the thralls, while making their way out in the open towards the bell tower, casting sleep on the 2 thralls guarding the tower entrance.
Reopening the tower door from the inside, and closing it back again with by moving all the piled up junk in front of the door, the party feels it has time for at least a short rest before they are discovered again.
Session end - Next time it's pure combat, with not skill tricks to save the day. The party was awarded xp = to the combats they defeated and bonus xp equal to 2 sixth level encounters for contributing to the encounter by significant uses of skill checks.
3.09.2009
Might as Well call this the Reset - Paragon's go!
So after several character swaps and other miscellaneous mishaps, the campaign feels like it is back on track.
What's happened in the in between - the short version.
Party with help from a tree stride teleporting dryad, goes after last Gatekeepers to buy time for them to come up with a plan to save their NPC companions who are held prisoner by the Cercators.
Party encounters some gnolls and griffons with assistance from their new friends the ranger and artificer. They defeat the first encounter with the ranger so badly wounded that he takes off never to be seen by the party again. The second encounter rolls on, and on, without much ranged assistance to bring down the manticore.
The battle over, the party takes shelter in the Manticore's cave, where they draw in the dragonshaped NPC Crusio (actually pelor trapped in Crusio form) - after a short puzzle about who Crusio is and who the party is to Pelor. Pelor emerges to awaken the locked powers of the soul in the party ( effectively giving them the ability to reach paragon or higher without using mod-soul weapons) Pelor says he can't act in this world, without catching notice from the soul society. Thus he leaves it to the party to finish the job, down into the caves they go and defeat a bloodfire harpy, rather easily. They use her teleportation circle to get to the basement of the Cercators chapel headquarters, where from their little Artificer friend decides to depart from them for his sewer home.
The party climbs through level after level of dungeon where they discover humans in all stages of the process of transformation from human to aberration. The reach a set of double doors and find a note torn from the armor of the mod-soul companion that pelor gave them, written in the hand of the girl they came to save - do not come for me, I'm safe for now, but if you follow I won't be. They see through her deception, and realize she isn't ok, but is trying to again save them while sacrificing herself.
They bust through the doors ready to battle, only to find a room full of cots and vagrants, who beg for change. The party hurriedly tosses change off in a corner to be rid of the vagrant pests. Then on up another staircase to an auditorium/gymnasium like room, where orphans are at play. They entertain what to do with the orphans or where to go, when the church bells ring, and the children file out to their dorms, and the vagrants file out to their dinner - all seemingly in a trance. The party follows the vagrant line to a dining hall, and instead of going through the line, duck off behind the kitchen, in the process noticing alchemical regents being poured into the food. They hide in a utility closet where they find their mod-soul buddy's armor, but no mod-soul jewel. Looking out a near by window, they find small foot prints that they follow to the woman's dorm, where they hear a girl screaming upstairs. They rush into the dorm causing a rucuss. To find the girl screaming about her bra moving on it's own. One party member convinces her to hold still while he helps her, and he removes the mod-soul jewel from the bra, causing it to stop moving. The girls are all still screaming, the party puts the jewel into a doll, and the talking doll leads them to the basement laundry where he last saw the girl they were looking for. Then the party hears the girls calling for Krul. The ground shakes as he approaches.
We pick up the following week, with the party convincing Krul that they were just lost and looking for a certain girl, he says he will take them to girls. Then the party attacks him while he is squeezed in the staircase. They effectively keep him in a tight spot most of the combat, so that he only makes one successful attack on them. A little healing later, they go up stairs and convince the girls that Krul is just resting and not to disturb him. They say they have to get ready for services and need their clothes, but the party convinces them to wear something else for now, because Krul really shouldn't be distrubed right now.
The party figures services is the best place to find the girl they were looking for, but in the 15 min wait they decide to explore the bell tower, breaking open the lock they enter and start up the stairs only to run into an acolyte who was coming down the stairs to see what the noise was. She tells them they can't be in there and to keep an eye out for who ever broke that lock. She goes back up stairs after barring the doors better. The party enters for services, and mid service the head of the Cercators who was giving the sermon stops because of the bells ringing late. The party manages to avoid communion by sliping out of the side doors, where they meet up with the girl they were looking for. She leads them back to the Auditorium where soon after a new party member shows up and tells them not to trust her, she isn't who she says she is. Then a combat starts between some upstairs baddies and the downstairs group. Lissera, the girl they were after runs off to go upstairs, but is passed by the barbarian in the group. He gets stuck in a trap the new guy party member place before combat. Then the swordmage passes Lissera telling her, to let him protect her this time. She says alright then, and doesn't enter the combat. After the baddies are eliminated the new guy still trys to convince the party not to trust her, and she tells the group it doesn't matter what he does or doesn't believe, they had all best leave there before anyone else shows up. She runs off ahead of the group, followed closely by the new guy, and the other 2 party members.
Lissera stops in the basement under the girls dorm, pushing a secret button on the wall, and goes quickly down into the opening. The new guys follows first, but when he gets down there and she is gone, he turns around to get back up to get out of the hole, but doesn't have enough movement to get completely out. The other 2 party members enter the secret passage, and the door immediately closes behind them all.
We'll see if they can get pass their distrust for the new guy long enough to survive the next encounter. It should be fun.
What's happened in the in between - the short version.
Party with help from a tree stride teleporting dryad, goes after last Gatekeepers to buy time for them to come up with a plan to save their NPC companions who are held prisoner by the Cercators.
Party encounters some gnolls and griffons with assistance from their new friends the ranger and artificer. They defeat the first encounter with the ranger so badly wounded that he takes off never to be seen by the party again. The second encounter rolls on, and on, without much ranged assistance to bring down the manticore.
The battle over, the party takes shelter in the Manticore's cave, where they draw in the dragonshaped NPC Crusio (actually pelor trapped in Crusio form) - after a short puzzle about who Crusio is and who the party is to Pelor. Pelor emerges to awaken the locked powers of the soul in the party ( effectively giving them the ability to reach paragon or higher without using mod-soul weapons) Pelor says he can't act in this world, without catching notice from the soul society. Thus he leaves it to the party to finish the job, down into the caves they go and defeat a bloodfire harpy, rather easily. They use her teleportation circle to get to the basement of the Cercators chapel headquarters, where from their little Artificer friend decides to depart from them for his sewer home.
The party climbs through level after level of dungeon where they discover humans in all stages of the process of transformation from human to aberration. The reach a set of double doors and find a note torn from the armor of the mod-soul companion that pelor gave them, written in the hand of the girl they came to save - do not come for me, I'm safe for now, but if you follow I won't be. They see through her deception, and realize she isn't ok, but is trying to again save them while sacrificing herself.
They bust through the doors ready to battle, only to find a room full of cots and vagrants, who beg for change. The party hurriedly tosses change off in a corner to be rid of the vagrant pests. Then on up another staircase to an auditorium/gymnasium like room, where orphans are at play. They entertain what to do with the orphans or where to go, when the church bells ring, and the children file out to their dorms, and the vagrants file out to their dinner - all seemingly in a trance. The party follows the vagrant line to a dining hall, and instead of going through the line, duck off behind the kitchen, in the process noticing alchemical regents being poured into the food. They hide in a utility closet where they find their mod-soul buddy's armor, but no mod-soul jewel. Looking out a near by window, they find small foot prints that they follow to the woman's dorm, where they hear a girl screaming upstairs. They rush into the dorm causing a rucuss. To find the girl screaming about her bra moving on it's own. One party member convinces her to hold still while he helps her, and he removes the mod-soul jewel from the bra, causing it to stop moving. The girls are all still screaming, the party puts the jewel into a doll, and the talking doll leads them to the basement laundry where he last saw the girl they were looking for. Then the party hears the girls calling for Krul. The ground shakes as he approaches.
We pick up the following week, with the party convincing Krul that they were just lost and looking for a certain girl, he says he will take them to girls. Then the party attacks him while he is squeezed in the staircase. They effectively keep him in a tight spot most of the combat, so that he only makes one successful attack on them. A little healing later, they go up stairs and convince the girls that Krul is just resting and not to disturb him. They say they have to get ready for services and need their clothes, but the party convinces them to wear something else for now, because Krul really shouldn't be distrubed right now.
The party figures services is the best place to find the girl they were looking for, but in the 15 min wait they decide to explore the bell tower, breaking open the lock they enter and start up the stairs only to run into an acolyte who was coming down the stairs to see what the noise was. She tells them they can't be in there and to keep an eye out for who ever broke that lock. She goes back up stairs after barring the doors better. The party enters for services, and mid service the head of the Cercators who was giving the sermon stops because of the bells ringing late. The party manages to avoid communion by sliping out of the side doors, where they meet up with the girl they were looking for. She leads them back to the Auditorium where soon after a new party member shows up and tells them not to trust her, she isn't who she says she is. Then a combat starts between some upstairs baddies and the downstairs group. Lissera, the girl they were after runs off to go upstairs, but is passed by the barbarian in the group. He gets stuck in a trap the new guy party member place before combat. Then the swordmage passes Lissera telling her, to let him protect her this time. She says alright then, and doesn't enter the combat. After the baddies are eliminated the new guy still trys to convince the party not to trust her, and she tells the group it doesn't matter what he does or doesn't believe, they had all best leave there before anyone else shows up. She runs off ahead of the group, followed closely by the new guy, and the other 2 party members.
Lissera stops in the basement under the girls dorm, pushing a secret button on the wall, and goes quickly down into the opening. The new guys follows first, but when he gets down there and she is gone, he turns around to get back up to get out of the hole, but doesn't have enough movement to get completely out. The other 2 party members enter the secret passage, and the door immediately closes behind them all.
We'll see if they can get pass their distrust for the new guy long enough to survive the next encounter. It should be fun.
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